


the sea stays in its lair (but wants to be where we are)

by Waistcoat35



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Fluff, Fluff and Angst, In Which The First Rule Of Thieving Is Probably Repeatedly Broken, Insecure Juno, Introspection, M/M, Nureyev's POV, Reunions, Sappy, Second Person, Self-Worth Issues, Smitten Nureyev, Sort Of, Very brief mention of Juno's suicidal thoughts/depression, identity crisis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-15
Updated: 2019-01-15
Packaged: 2019-10-10 22:03:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17434331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Waistcoat35/pseuds/Waistcoat35
Summary: "I don't think I shall ever stop coming back to you. I don't think I shall ever be able to."





	the sea stays in its lair (but wants to be where we are)

**Author's Note:**

> So I wrote this all by hand first and it took ages and then I typed it all up on my iPad which also took ages and also I'm rather ill right now so ignore any shitty bracket use and I'll fix it later.
> 
> Title is from a wonderful Helen Dunmore poem called 'Loose Curl'

  
I don't think I shall ever stop coming back to you. I don't think I shall ever be able to.

This time, I didn't even pretend I hadn't planned to come here. It was a split second decision, in one way, because I looked up at the glaring departures information sign (trying not to flinch at the intensity of its glow in my lenses, because while Peter Nureyev might shy from its light, Champion Seacrest most certainly does not,) and there was no thinking. It's the first planet on my tongue, the first city in my mind, the first person in my - well, I suppose I must have a heart then, after all, now mustn't I. I have defined it but you have found it, like prying a pearl from an oyster.

On the other end of the spectrum, it was quite possibly the most planned-out decision I've ever made, one that stole away weeks and months and what feels like years, in dreams and nightmares and nights where I've had neither.

And later, unexpectedly, in hopes.

(Rule number one of thieving, Pete, don't hope, because that means you aren't sure.) No. Stop it.

Whatever it was, I'm here now, and you seem to be in trouble, you silly dear. (No, Seacrest says that, not me. Doesn't he? Does he? Dear. You are very dear to me, after all. I think I've called you that a few times before. In my head? Out loud?) Doesn't make a difference. It doesn't make a difference either way, because after what you saw and heard and felt inside my head, you probably know anyway. Perhaps that, in the end, is what scared you so. It certainly scared me, a little.

(But are you afraid of being dear to me, or of being dear to anyone at all?) Because I know your ways, my dear detective, better than I've ever known my own chameleon skin, and you've never been prone to self-reward. Despite all the good that you do. All the good that you are. You practically embody it - what it means to be human. Or - what it ought to mean, anyway.

To do good recklessly, to do it for its own sake rather than yours, to do it whenever it is possible and to make up for it when it is not. And perhaps you don't always do it in the small ways, but it is enough of a fight to pull yourself into doing it in the big ones. Doing the right thing so seldom equates to doing the easy one, but you do it anyway, and you it again, and you've never done it for yourself, I don't think, because you never feel like a better person for it, never seem to have anything to gain, but plenty to lose, (and that rather does confuse me, because a thief's every action is to gain something - that is, in fact, the entire point,) and yet you can't ever seem to stop.

I wish you would let yourself feel like a better person for it all. Your own self-starvation for praise, for affection physical or emotional, is perhaps the only injustice you've made no attempt to rectify. Perhaps we should switch roles for a bit - I'd rather like to help you fix that, my dear.

And I've said it again, and maybe - just maybe - I've had it the wrong way round all along. I am not, in fact, being poisoned by my own aliases. In fact, each one has an ingrained part that is, perhaps, a part of the me that loves you. Put all of those parts together, and you leave the aliases empty, but you make myself in full. How thrilling, and yet how petrifying - they say that however you act for others is a lie, and so only when alone are you your true self - but thieves lie, and they lie to their own minds especially, and now you are in fact the only being in this vast universe that I can be real for. The only single one.

(And a small, bitter shred of me tries to nag, tries to remind me of what happened last time I did that for you. But I push it down, and finally snap back to the battle at hand. The one you're currently fighting. Usually I'd have been watching raptly, planning my own first move. See, you like to gatecrash all my plans, now.) Dear me, she looks like a nasty piece of work. I'm not surprised you decided to fight her, and all on your own, or so you presumed.

It feels sad, all of a sudden, a lone wolf standing before a great evil. But wolves can form packs, can they not?

Champion Seacrest has long fled, now. As much as he also loves you, he is not at all brave. Peter Nureyev often doesn't feel brave, not right now either (not that anybody else would know) but I think of you, doing good when it is the opposite of easy, being brave when you have every excuse not to, living and breathing and fighting when you'd like to do anything but. You are not what I wanted to be, as a boy. But you are what I should've started trying to become a long, long time ago, and so I make myself be brave. I leap from the ledge.

I'm next to you now, and it's partly your own fault you look so surprised, but also very much my own.

All this time you've been baring your teeth at the big mean world, while I've been flashing my own in a grin and courting it. But now I follow your lead. The end is right here, and yet we just stand, hackles, guns, knives raised, and we snarl at it. Perhaps that is all that being good is sometimes, when it boils down to the bare bones of the matter.

"Why'd you drop in?"   
"I heard an old friend was in a spot of bother."  
"You shouldn't have, y'know."  
"I couldn't leave my favourite lady in the lurch. Not when there's so very much left to fix."  
  
I can hear you swallow.

"Well, took ya long enough."

No, I don't think I shall ever stop coming back to you. I don't think that I shall ever want to. 


End file.
